Do We, Decimal?
© 2022 by Walter Reimer

Thumbnail art by  dragonmelde, color by  marmelmm



The sign on the door read Card Catalog.

“’Card catalog?’” Varan repeated. “No computer?”

“The game is set in sort of an archaic time,” Meredith pointed out, “so here we go,” and after saving the game she pushed the door open.

Light flared as they stepped in, and faded.

The room was white and so featureless that there was no way of telling by eyesight how far away the walls or ceiling might be. “Where are we?” the paladin asked.

The mare’s ears swiveled and Varan’s ears perked as a girlish giggle rang out behind the two adventurers. They turned to see a short roe deer doe wearing a loincloth, jeweled bracelets on her fetlocks and wrists, and a broad and happy smile. Her eyes were glowing red and two curling ram’s horns framed her face as she looked around. “Isn’t it obvious?” she asked. “You’re standing in a meadow full of flowers,” and she tipped her head back, eyes closing as she breathed in through her nose.

“No, we’re not,” Varan said. “We are in the Library, looking for something called the card catalog.”

“Are you sure?” and the doe smiled as the pair found themselves standing in a flower-strewn field, the sky overhead blue with fleecy white clouds. “What do your senses tell you?”

Meredith stooped and dragged her fingers through the dirt at her hooves. It felt real. She straightened up and asked, “So where were we before?”

“You have always been here,” the doe said reasonably.

“Who are you?” Varan asked.

The doe replied, “You may call me Rene.”

“Rene, what was the white room we were in?” the mare asked.

“White room? Did it have black curtains?” Rene tipped her head back and laughed as a butterfly flitted about her. “You have always been here,” she said in a gentle, even voice.

“But – “

“If you remember being somewhere else, I can only guess that you must have been insane,” Rene said reasonably. “But you have come to your senses again.”

“Should we look around?” Varan asked.

“That’s the spirit!” the doe exclaimed. “Good, worthwhile curiosity. You’ll go far.” She sat down and started picking flowers.

Meredith nibbled doubtfully on her lower lip before replying, “There’s no harm in looking around,” and she extended a paw to the vir, who took it. They then set off, the roe deer doe named Rene left behind and weaving a small flower garland for herself.

The two adventurers traveled far and wide, never finding what they sought; eventually they stopped looking and settled down together. Over time, they forgot that there was anyone else apart from each other as they grew old and died together.

Game Over.


***


“Well! That was abrupt,” Fuji said as Meredith growled. “Is it an illusion?”

The mare looked at the bull before she started to smile. “You’re probably right, and it’s ironic that the game’s in a holographic simulator. So we have an illusion talking us into accepting an illusion.”

The Komodo monitor blinked. “Wow. That’s complicated. So, how do you get you and Varan out of it?”

“Don’t know yet,” his mate replied. “Let’s get some lunch, and we’ll try again.”


***


Again, the room was white. “Hello?” Meredith called out. “We’re looking for the card catalog.”

“Oh, you won’t find that here,” the roe doe said with a chuckle. She stood beside a desk in a cramped office, wearing a severe gray suit. A small plastic plate printed with the name Rene was pinned to a lapel. “You’re not employed here to indulge in flights of fancy like that. There’s work to do.” She gestured out the open door to her left, where furs of every species were seated within cubicles, working away.

The mage glanced around as Meredith abruptly said, “I don’t believe you.”

Rene looked surprised. “You don’t believe me? Look around you; what do you see? Hear? Smell?”

“It’s an illusion,” the mare said.

Varan’s tail flicked as she raised her mage’s staff and began to cast.

Rene huffed, and a trickle of flame accompanied by a wisp of brimstone-scented smoke spurted from one nostril. “You’re no fun,” and she vanished.

So did the office, the workers, and all the furnishings.

What replaced it was a howling gale inside a huge room paneled in dark wood and gilding, a cyclone within which a veritable snowstorm of small paper cards whirled about. The wind clawed at the paladin’s cape and the mage’s cloak as it began to suck them into its vortex.

“Hang on!” Varan shouted over the roar of the wind, her prehensile tail wrapping around a column and reaching out to the mare. Meredith’s paws grabbed at Varan’s hands just as her hooves left the floor, and the vir groaned at the pain in her tail. “It . . . I can’t . . . “

“Save yourself!” Meredith said, pulling her paws free and flying straight into the maelstrom. Unwilling to leave her friend, Varan released her grip on the column and was pulled in after the mare.

The blizzard of cards that spun around had writing on them; Varan plucked one that had stuck itself to her face and read it. “A subject, and some sort of alphanumeric code,” the vir said.

“It’s a start – as long as we survive this,” Meredith said, looking down at the floor about twenty meters below them. The mare watched as another fur entered the room and didn’t even try to resist the tornadic wind. The fur, a canine, shouted a subject and a thin stream of cards flowed down to him. He tossed a few away, nodded at one – and vanished. “Did you see that?” she asked Varan.

“Yes, I did.” The vir closed her eyes, opened them, and said, “We seek the Amulet of Asininity.”

A thin stream of cards obligingly altered their path in the wind, and the vir and the mare began sorting through them. “This might be it,” Varan said after reading the card in her hand. Meredith grasped it as well, and they both nodded.

They vanished.

The card, now no longer being held, fluttered away. It read:

69.069
Museum of Ideas